


You Set The Scene

by GoodbyeBlueMonday



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: F/M, Introspection, Memories, POV Female Character, Pre-Relationship, Slight Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-07-05
Packaged: 2017-12-15 11:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/848809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodbyeBlueMonday/pseuds/GoodbyeBlueMonday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The beginning of Lust's relationship with Lujon. Originally she was just using him, but their interactions have a way of trudging up memories she's not sure she's ready to process - because they're not even quite her own. Nevertheless, even a homunculus can't help but be wrapped up in the world of memory, to the point of questioning her waking life.</p><p>Originally intended to be longer, but I think I'm unlikely to add more and these chapters make their own nice short story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from a song from the acclaimed 1967 album _Forever Changes_ by Love, which inspired some of this. But this fic is mainly here because I wanted to write a Lust-centric fic. She's my favorite female character in the 2003 anime, and I don't think she gets nearly the attention she deserves in fanfiction.
> 
> Was originally intended to be a one-shot, but didn't want the draft to disappear just yet, so I'm posting what I have as the first chapter. There is definitely more to come!

Envy had said it would be simple.

"If we can't manipulate situations to make them want the Stone," the shapeshifter had told Lust, "we'll create them."

"So what do you plan to do?" Lust had asked him.

"I'll spread disease. One of my own creation. It'll work fast, but it will be painful, and there will be a great deal of suffering. The perfect motivator."

Envy flashed his wide, demonic grin, indicating he enjoyed the thought. Lust had it seen many times before on his face, but it never failed to leave her unsettled, even knowing that Envy was on her side. God, it made her _thankful_ that the green-haired homunculus was on her side.

She had her own sadistic streak - they all did, it was of their essence - but nothing as wide as the shapeshifter's. Lust had never asked. She wasn't sure she wanted to know why.

"That sounds good," she said. "So how do you plan to spread it?"

"Put it in the water supply. That'll help it work fast. Humans can't go without water for too long."

"Good, good," Lust nodded. The plan was airtight. 

And they had nothing to lose. No reason for the looser military dogs - like that ambitious, womanizing Colonel, or his diminutive golden boy - to be worried about some random little eastern town in the midst of an epidemic, where the red stone is doing nothing but curing people of it. Nothing particularly showy or miraculous, like raising people from the dead, or hacks turning into master alchemists overnight.

They'd learned their lesson with Majahal and the others. They wouldn't repeat it here.

Lust smiled. It wouldn't be long before they had the Stone.

It wouldn't be long before she had some clue to who she was, and who she could be.

* * *

 Envy hadn't been kidding when he said the disease was painful. It was horrifying. The townspeople's skin turned to stone, speedily (Envy was right about that, too) ossifying as they lost more and more control over their limbs. And then even simple reflexes, mere facial expressions were too difficult. They had no choice but to gradually surrender control as the disease ran its course over their bodies, rendering them inflexible, brought chained before their fates.

They called it the Fossil Disease.

The townspeople were in panic, not knowing what to do. Not knowing who would be next. Except for one. He had brownish-gray hair, glasses, a largish nose. He was young, but Lust saw the tell-tale fire in his eyes. He was an alchemist. He was a doctor, driven to save his people.

He was the one. She'd gotten good at spotting them over the years.

The one desperate enough, driven enough, talented enough, to potentially lead them to the Stone. And Lust felt something was particularly potent - maybe even familiar? - about this man, which hopefully had something to do with his level of alchemical skill.

But while talented, he had limited resources in this one-horse town. He would never come to the conclusion on his own. He would need a push in the right direction.

Lust told her comrade about this, who was in the guise of an old sage man, watching the madness unfold from the top of a hill that overlooked the village.

"Well, of course, we have to be that nudge," Envy said. "Why don't you give him some red stones?"

"But we want things to be desperate enough for him to make  _the_ Stone," Lust replied.

"Exactly," Envy continued. "He'll cure them all with the red stone - temporarily. But then when it breaks, he'll be pushed to the point of despair. And he'll do whatever it takes, not caring at all about the human cost."

"I suppose you're right," Lust said. "Why are you so confident he'll be desperate enough, though?"

"Because he's got that thing that drives all those silly humans. Love."

Lust looked at him oddly. "How do you know?"

"You should be more observant," Envy said. "Even if you can't pass among them the way I can. It's plainly obvious. One of the women who's fallen ill - Lydia, I think her name was. She's promised to him, or something." 

There was something oddly familiar about this, but Lust couldn't put her finger on it. But it felt like she had seen, maybe even been a part of this, before. In some distant past, or maybe even a dream.

"Of course, she's not actually going to die - not  _yet_ ," Envy continued. "We need her alive as his motivation. That's the nice thing about creating this disease from scratch; I can do what I want with it. I'll let it take her when her boyfriend's outlived his usefulness."

Was it a dream? Or was it something that had actually happened? Lust had a vision - another bespectacled, studious young man, in a desperate, falling city, with a woman he loved on her deathbed. Full of the same desperation she'd seen in this doctor.

The shapeshifter returned to his usual, androgynous form.

"Lust?" he asked, his eyes wide and confused.

* * *

It had been easy enough to approach the man. His eyes were wide with desperation and loneliness. He looked like he would take anything, do anything to get rid of that feeling.

So that was what possibly losing the person you loved did to a human.

"I hear you are the doctor for this town," Lust had told him, matter-of-factly as possible. 

He acknowledged her, and did something that surprised her - even though it shouldn't have, by that point. The man did the thing that _all_ men and a-certain-way-inclined women did when they first saw Lust. They gave her a once-over, lingering on a certain area between her neck and her belly.

 _So, this love drives him mad with grief_ , she thought, _but doesn't keep him from noticing other women. That's pretty worthless._

She knew she had her name for a reason, but wasn't love supposed to overcome lust?

"Yes," he had replied after he'd finished trailing his eyes across her body, and boring them into her bust. "My name is Lujon."

"Nice to meet you," Lust had said. She wondered if she should give him her actual name, or should use a pseudonym.

She decided to hold off on that decision for now, while she could.

"You're not from around here," he'd continued.

"I'm passing through."

"Now's not a good time to be doing that," he'd said, sadly. "You probably know by now, but the town is raging with a horrible disease, that no one knows how to cure. _I_ can't cure it. It's not a good idea for you to be here. You might catch it and spread it."

"But that's why I'm here," Lust had said. "I have something that can help you."

She opened her palm and produced the gleaming red stone.

Lujon's eyes got wide, and he gaped for what seemed like months. Finally, he spoke, slowly and with his voice trembling. "That's not...that's not what I think it is... is it?"

Lust chuckled. "So you're _that_ kind of alchemist. But alas, it's not. However, it can guide you to that, if you allow me to assist you. And it will help you heal your town along the way, if you use it on the people who are ailing."

She held the stone out to him and he shyly took it. "Thank you," he said. "If you can help me, help us... I'd gladly take you on as an assistant."

"That would work," Lust had said, in mock gratitude. Inside, she was scoffing. _Assistant_ , indeed. She knew more about alchemy than he probably would in his lifetime. What a pity she could never actually do it herself, and had to rely on hacks like him to carry out her desires. What a pity she could never be anything more than a puppetmaster.

It's a good thing he seemed like a fairly willing puppet, not asking too many questions. They set a time that she would meet him the next day and he'd show her around the labs.

"But wait," he had suddenly exclaimed as Lust was walking away. As though Lujon suddenly remembered something.

"Hm?" She turned back toward him.

"How did you know I was an alchemist?"

Lust just smiled darkly his way. "I would say 'women's intiution,'" she began, "but I think for me it runs a bit deeper than most."

He seemed to accept that, as Lust made her way back to the top of the hill, to continue planning with the other homunculi.

It went well, mostly because Lust didn't overthink it, but just stuck to the script. She didn't spend time dwelling on the way that Lujon seemed to dig up something long-buried, and uncomfortable, within her.

Lust was a master at reading and manipulating others, especially men - but she wasn't the best at turning her intuitive lens on herself. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lujon gets better and better at alchemy, and he reaches out to Lust more.  
> But she doesn't feel him. She feels...someone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recently re-watched the episode this is based on ("Reunion of the Fallen") and so a lot of the events in this chapter I based on ones from the actual anime - though, since this is slightly AU, I changed the dialogue and other things around a bit.

"These books are nonsense," Lust said, as she ripped out pages, and tossed the bindings carelessly on the floor.

It transformed the once-clean (meticulously so, for an alchemist, Lust thought - they always had books and supplies everywhere) floor of Lujon's library into a complete mess. The man made some sort of short, agonized squeal in response.

"You ruined them! You have no idea how long it took me to collect them!" he cried, grabbing at his hair. The alchemist's glasses twitched nervously on his nose. "I was carefully studying them - they had all the secrets for healing alchemy!"

"All the secrets," Lust explained, "that will be completely useless to you.

"Now listen to me," she continued. "I've traveled much further than you have, I know more of this than you do. I may be the 'assistant,' but I hold all the power and knowledge here, and you know that, Lujon."

"Yes, ma'am," he said in response, straightening up. "But you don't have to ruin my library."

"It's the only way you'll learn," she said, chuckling to herself. "You get too attached to these stupid things. You keep reading them after I've told you there's no use. Now, do you have matches?"

"Don't burn the whole library down!" He went back to being panicked, trembling, his eyes widening again - almost bulging.

"I won't," she said, putting a hand on Lujon's shoulder, which just caused him to tremble more - a different sort of tremble. A more familiar kind, the kind Lust was used to inspiring in men. "Just these, and the other useless parts."

She managed to find his matches on her own, tucked into one of the drawers in his desk, and lit one. She'd also found a bottle of gin that the man had kept in his pantry - _so many of these frustrated alchemists seem to turn to the bottle_ , she thought to herself - and poured a bit (but not too much, she really _didn't_ think it prudent to burn the man's library down) of the liquid on the discarded pages and bindings. And then Lust dropped the match to the pile. The flame leapt up as it hit the fuel, and the pages blazed into a burst of light and heat. A funeral pyre for the alchemist's previous, failed theories.

Lust knew a lot about alchemy. The fire reminded her of the State Alchemist with the gloves that produced flames, who was so instrumental in the destruction of Ishval, who she knew was the one always sending the Elric boys out to thwart their plans in other towns. Lust wondered if elemental alchemy was really all that beyond her comprehension - if, before long, she couldn't direct these alchemist puppets of hers to create the pyres themselves. She'd seen very little of fire alchemy in the books she'd studied, but Lust was sure the knowledge was out there and not too difficult to master, if she could find it.

(It really was a _shame_ that she couldn't do alchemy herself. More reason to push these hacks to chase after the Stone, so she could become human and put her studies to better use.)

Plus, there was something she really liked about fire, with its dual, opposite natures. It destroyed, eating everything in its wake, but in the same way, its sweeping-away cleansed, because it allowed for fresh starts. It left a tabula rasa. Which was an ending, but also a beginning, like the ourobouros on Lust's chest. No wonder the mythical phoenix, symbol of rebirth, was associated with flames.

And as the pages turned to ashes, Lust knew this would be a new beginning for Lujon. And maybe for Lust and the other homunculi, too.

If she played her cards right. She could only hope. 

* * *

 

She'd helped Lujon draw arrays on the ground, the same ground where they'd burned his books not too long ago. May as well start drawing on the slate they'd wiped clean.

"We start small. Very small," Lust said, grabbing a cockroach she'd found on the wall of Lujon's kitchen earlier that day, and carefully hidden away in a jar in the ensuing hours. She'd been careful not to get her claws out - her Ultimate Spear - when she pierced the insect's abdomen. She had to wound, not kill. Even the red stone couldn't really bring anything back from the dead. Even something as small as insects.

But it wasn't time for the red stone now. "Don't get the ring I gave you out, not yet," Lust reminded him. "You need to be able to do this much without it. Or you can't hope to help the people in your town, even with that stone."

"Do what?" he asked, before she placed the wounded roach in the middle of the array. The thing was on its back, wiggling its six legs madly in the air, trying to turn around, but to no avail. Lust had made sure of that.

"Heal this thing first," she said, "and then we can work our way to bigger, more complicated creatures. With the people in your town as the end goal. I know you don't have much time, but you'll only make it worse if you jump in without preparation."

"Okay," Lujon said. "When did you become the teacher, and me the student?"

Lust laughed. "When you realized I knew more about alchemy than you did."

Lujon paused for a moment, clearly pondering something. "Which is strange," he said, "because I don't think I've ever seen you actually do it."

Lust would have flinched, but he wasn't the first alchemist to pose that to her. She'd had her lines prepared for this query, long ago.

"I favor a more theoretical approach," she said, trying not to sound too rehearsed, "and would rather see the students test the knowledge out themselves, than watch me do it."

"But how do I know that you're a good alchemist, good enough that I should listen to what you say?" 

"When you do as I say, and it works."

"Yes, ma'am."

That did make Lust flinch. "Stop calling me that. I have a name, you know."

Lujon looked at her, confused. "That's the thing. You've never told me your name."

Lust was taken aback. Hadn't she? Were all the previous alchemists bleeding together in her mind - was she forgetting who she'd told what to?

 _No, he reminds you of someone else_ , a small voice in the back of her head said.

A voice which got louder every day, but which was still soft enough to ignore when irrelevant. Like now.

"My name is Lust," she said, firmly. So he wouldn't forget.

He looked at her for a long time. "Lust, huh," Lujon said. "Well, that's a fitting name."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Oh, come on," Lujon sighed. "You must know, that you're good-looking. I'm sure I'm not the first man to think so." He gazed at her more appreciatively, running his eyes over her form, again.

She noticed them rest on her hips this time. Lust was suddenly reminded of what Envy had told her about this man. "Aren't you engaged?"

Not that she cared much for humans and their relationships, but it felt like the right thing to say. At least, to play the part. Not to be someone taking an honest man away from the woman who loved him. Especially when Lust herself had nothing to give.

Lujon gave a sad smile. "Being in love doesn't mean you can't still look, can't notice." And it turned into a smirk. "Can't _lust_ , you know."

She rolled her eyes and groaned. "Just activate the array."

* * *

The problem was that, the longer that Lust spent with Lujon, the more her mind drifted to another man - a man she didn't know, wasn't sure she had ever met, but who felt familiar, and who filled her with a strange sort of longing.

Like Lujon, he had dark hair and spectacles. Like him, he was working with medical alchemy. 

Like him, his devotion was based on love. Love for a woman.

But this time, the woman looked familiar. She looked a lot like Lust.

These visions had been haunting her dreams occasionally, over the handful of years that Lust had been alive. But before they'd been occasional, and she figured they were no more real or had any meaning to them than anything else that came in a dream. They had a little less of that surreal haze to them, but were still easy to dismiss.

Yet, since Lust had come to teach Lujon, they had taken up every night, and many of her waking hours.

Because he reminded her of this man.

The strange thing was that, she felt some strange sort of draw toward this mysterious man, this man who existed only in her dreams and memories. Maybe it was because the woman she kept seeing beside him so strongly resembled Lust. So it felt like he belonged to her, in some way.

Were they visions of another life? A previous life? She knew some religions believed in reincarnation, and that one could feel connections to their previous lives under the right set of circumstances. But that was for humans. She was a homunculus. Her kind came from the Gate. How could they have past lives?

Regardless, this pull toward this mystery man, and Lujon's resemblance to him, caused Lust to feel a pull toward the alchemist himself. As he became more powerful under Lust's tutelage, he began to pay even more attention to her than he had before - looking at her, no,  _staring_ at her, and even reaching out to touch her.

And she found herself minding it less and less as the time went on, and the visions invaded more and more of her thoughts, filled more and more of her days with Lujon.

* * *

 

They eventually moved beyond insects, to more advanced animals. Lust found a bluebird, and struck it from the sky.

"Use your array, make it fly again. Like how you'll liberate your neighbors from their stone prisons."

"Yes," he said, solemnly, surely. Lujon drew the array they'd perfected in his room in the dirt by the tree, the red stone ring around his fingers. The bird was placed in the middle of it, and he pressed his hands to the circle. The stone flashed.

After the light of the reaction subsided, the bluebird soared away, chirping merrily, and landed on a nearby tree.

"I did it!" he said excitedly. "I cured it! Oh, Lust, I couldn't have done it without you!"

He embraced her - the first time he'd touched her that intimately. And her mind flashed to a different embrace, of a different woman - the one who resembled her - by the other bespectacled alchemist. The one of her memories.

Her eyes went wide, and she felt heat in her gut. Like fire.

Would this signal a new beginning, too?


End file.
